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Tullock Lecture: Media Bias, Its Effects, and Its Implications for the Fairness Doctrine

The Information Economy Project at
George Mason University
proudly presents The Tullock Lecture
on Big
Ideas
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Media Bias, Its Effects, and Its Implications for the Fairness Doctrine

with Tim GrosecloseMarvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics at UCLA

Tuesday, November 29, 2011, at 4:00 p.m.Room 215George Mason University School of LawArlington, Virginia
Orange Line Metro (Virginia Square/GMU)
Reception to Follow in the Levy Atrium

Many politicians, authors, and media professionals make claims of a
liberal bias in the media—only to be dismissed as disgruntled,
paranoid, or selective in their evidence of such bias. But what if
they’re right?

Tim Groseclose, a professor of political science and economics at
UCLA, has spent years constructing precise quantitative measures of the
slant of television, radio, and print media. e estimates the SQ, or
slant quotient, of various news outlets. In his book, Left Turn,
Groseclose reports some of the results of his research, including: (i)
that nearly all mainstream media outlets have a liberal bias; (ii) that
many so-called conservative outlets are in fact less tilted toward the
right than the typical mainstream outlet is tilted toward the left; and
(iii) the bias has shifted the average American’s PQ, or political
quotient, significantly to the left.

In his talk, Groseclose will also discuss the implications of his
research for the Fairness Doctrine. Specifically, the Doctrine
required outlets to present “controversial” issues in a “balanced”
way. Groseclose contends that the definitions of controversial and
balanced depend on the PQ of the average American voter. But if the
latter can be distorted by media bias, defining “controversial” and
“balanced” is tricky. So also is any implementation of the Fairness
Doctrine.